Martin Quigley

“ Kircher and Edison do not stand alone in the parade of pioneers in the art and science of the screen. The list of builders of the cinema is as cosmopolitan as its appeal: Greeks, Romans, Persians, British, Italians, Germans, French, Belgians, Austrians and lastly, and in some ways most importantly, Americans. Ancient philosophers, medieval monks, scholarly giants of the Renaissance, scientists, necromancers, modern inventors—all had a role in the 2500 year story of the creation, out of light and shadow, of this most popular and most influential expression—the motion picture. ”

“ Action was always, and still is, a problem to the artist working with a “still” medium. A pinnacle of success in this quest was reached in the Winged Victory of Samothrace in which the artist did all in his power to show motion in the medium of cold, lifeless marble.
However, the potential progress was limited as long as it was necessary to rely upon the skilled hand of the artist to convey motion. More had to be learned about light and shadow and also a great deal about the everlasting wonder of the human eye before living reality could be captured for future representation. ”

“ Bacon added that the world was full of such fakers. It is not surprising that those skilled in the black arts tried to use the strange medium of light and shadow to impose upon the ignorant and unwary.
The death of Roger Bacon in 1294 was the passing of one of the greatest men in the history of light and shadow. With him the art-science had reached a point at which magic shadow entertainment devices could be built. Friar Bacon did much more to prepare the way for devices which were not to be perfected for centuries than merely make a contribution to the knowledge of light, lenses and mirrors. ”

“ And so, in a very early day man took up drawing, a variation of light and shadow portrayal. But the early drawings, and attempts for centuries thereafter, did not wholly succeed in their purpose. Life of the surrounding world could not be caught in all its wondrous detail no matter how skilled was the artist. The first picture critics pointed out that the drawings were unnatural because no action was shown and life itself was full of motion. ”

“ At the same time you are to introduce the other glass with the ships, and moving in like manner, you will have a natural representation of the sea, and of ships in a calm and in a storm. As you draw the glasses slowly back, the tempest will seem to subside, the sky grow clear, and the ships glide gently over the waves.
With Musschenbroek the magic shadows began to have real motion and the effect on the audience consequently was much greater. Kircher’s projector was growing up. ”

“ But Uchatius then and now should have been praised not for his engines of war but for his important contribution to the magic shadow art-science. For by perfecting a motion picture machine which would bring living pictures before audiences, Uchatius, together with Kircher and Plateau, the other great magic shadow pioneers, deserves credit and the gratitude of untold millions who down through the years have had their lives enriched through this great new medium of expression. ”

“ The modern projector likewise has its film pictures on a small wheel or reel.
Kircher explained that in this catoptric machine a man looking at the mirror (equivalent to the screen in a theatre) sees images of a fire, a cow and other animals all blending one into another. It is unlikely that the giant wheel could be revolved swiftly enough to give anything like the proper illusion of motion but certainly there was a transformation which must have appeared wondrous and entertaining. ”

“ Thus the year of 1889 brought together two great figures, Marey, a pure scientist whose zeal for learning about locomotion resulted in improvements in what was to be the motion picture art-science, and Edison who invented the first entirely practical motion picture camera and the first film peep-show device which was to be the inspiration for projectors as they were finally established, setting the pattern even to our day. ”

“ Italy of the Renaissance dominates magic shadow development—Leonardo da Vinci describes in detail the camera obscura—Inventions are by Alberti, Maurolico, Cesariano and Cardano.
To the giant of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, must go the credit for being the first to determine and record the principles of the camera obscura, or “dark room”, basic instrument of all photography. Da Vinci lived in a wondrous age. Michelangelo was painting and sculpturing his unparalleled creations. Raphael was at work. The Italians of the Renaissance led the world in a new culture. ”

“ After the great spurt of activity in Philadelphia, during the working life of the Langenheims, the chief center of activity was Paris and the leader was Etienne Jules Marey.
Plateau in Belgium came to the invention of the magic disk, which was the first “motion picture” device, through his study of vision and the desire to understand more about it. Marey, by his own action and the work of others influenced by him, gave great impetus to the photographing and projection of motion pictures, through his wish to learn more about movement, the movement of life—animals, birds, and men. ”

“ Higher studies were carried on at the Royal College and in 1822, at the age of 21, Plateau entered the University of Liége as a candidate for a degree both in philosophy and letters, and in science. As the years progressed Plateau turned more and more of his attention toward science, especially problems concerning color, vision and the perception of motion. But all through life he retained the fullness of viewpoint of a man with a background and interests in many fields so his imagination never was dulled, as sometimes happens in the cases of specialists in a restricted field of science. ”

“ After listing these many diverse uses of the magic lantern system Kircher thought it well to conclude his book lest he be charged with “meandering” endlessly on a subject which some would consider trivial. Kircher said, “We leave all these to the talented reader for further refinement. A word to the wise is sufficient. Innumerable things could be said concerning the application of this device but we leave to others new material of invention and lest this work grow too long we cut off the thread of discussion about these devices.” ”

“ It may strike the reader as strange, but he may easily convince himself by making a little experiment: cut a square hole in a piece of dark paper and let the image of the sun fall on a mirror or other smooth surface and you will see that the sun is still round despite the square hole. As a word of caution, one must be careful to avoid eye strain when viewing the sun and its reflections. Several of the principal characters in motion picture pre-history ruined their eyes by studying the sun for too long a period at one time. ”

“ Phantasmagoria is the magic lantern illusion associated with making phantasms appear before an audience. The only contribution to the art-science is that it created an illusion of motion through the novel means of moving the projector instead of the slides or film. ”

“ But it was as an artist that Alberti made his contribution to the art and science of light and shadows. He invented the camera lucida, a machine which aided artists and painters by reflecting images and scenes to be painted or drawn. The device, a modification of the “dark room”, could also be used to make it easy to copy a design. In a sense, the camera lucida was the forerunner of the modern blue-print duplicator. After Alberti had made his original drawings, an assistant, with the aid of the device, could rapidly copy them and give duplicates to the builders for use on the construction job. ”

“ Plateau conceived the idea of having successively different pictures which would give the illusion of motion for use on the revolving disk. With each figure showing some changes of position from the preceding, the illusion is that the figures move and not the disk; and so it is with modern motion pictures. We have no consciousness of the movement of film through the machine before our eyes—only of movement of the figures on the film as projected on the screen. ”

“ Edison wrote a forward which said in part that he had the idea that it was possible to devise a sight and sound combination apparatus in 1887. “This idea, the germ of which came from the little toy called the Zoetrope (i.e., the Plateau-Stampfer magic disk) and the work by Muybridge, Marie (i.e., Marey) and others has now been accomplished, so that every change of facial expression can be recorded and reproduced life-size. The Kinetoscope is only a small model illustrating the present stage of progress but with each succeeding month new possibilities are brought into view.” ”

“ During the period between the time Edison achieved his first success with motion pictures, in 1889, until his peep-show viewing machines were put on public display in New York, Paris and London in 1894, hesitant, unsteady steps, like those of a baby learning to walk, were being taken in advancing the magic shadow art-science. ”

“ For cinema purposes, one of the earliest examples of “motion” still pictures is a representation of a boar trotting along, for some 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 years, on a wall of the Font-de-Faune cave at Altamira near Santillana del Mar in Northern Spain. The artist tried to show the boar’s headlong pace by equipping the animal with two complete sets of legs. It was recognized a long while before Walt Disney that more than one still picture was necessary to portray natural motion.
For centuries artists continued to strive for the “illusion” of motion without “moving pictures.” ”

“ Sometime, in the middle or late part of 1887 Edison started work on what was to become his Kinetograph, the first motion picture camera that could photograph a few seconds of action at a time, and the Kinetoscope, the popular peep-show film device which brought the magic shadow art before the modern public and opened the way for the establishment of the motion picture industry. ”

“ The projection of life-size motion pictures on a screen before an audience might have been achieved considerably earlier had Edison not felt that there would be no commercial market for such a device. The little peep-show models could be manufactured at rather low cost and sold at a profit, so no impetus was given to the development of a screen projector which might, he thought, quickly dissipate the public’s interest and destroy the market. ”

“ Musschenbroek, in addition to being the first credited with introducing effective, though very artificial, motion into light and shadow entertainment and instruction, was said to be the first man to create the illusion of white light by revolving very rapidly a disk painted with seven colors. That effect must have been as magical to Abbé Nollet as his “moving” pictures. It also indicates that considerable advance was being made in the knowledge of vision and the means to create optical illusions, upon which the principle of the motion picture rests. ”

“ To Kepler goes the credit for being the first correctly to explain after-images, a knowledge of which is so vital to understanding how the illusion of motion is created.
Kepler started to use a telescope about 1609 and through its use he was able to develop improved ideas for the room camera by the time he published his Dioptrice, “Concerning Lenses,” a foundation of modern optics, in 1611. In that work the basis was first established for what was later to be long-range or “telescope” photography which makes possible many important effects in the modern motion picture. ”

“ In Marey’s projector the sun’s rays are interrupted by a hand driven shutter wheel and reflected by two mirrors through the film, the light then passing through the projection lens and throwing the pictures onto the screen.
“The motion of the film,” Marey wrote, “as it halts at each flash, is brought about by an apparatus not shown in the figure. It is similar to that of the simple chronophotographic apparatus (camera) , with the difference that the positive film, having its ends fastened together to make an endless belt, passes over a series of rollers which stretch it taut.” ”

“ Two and a half centuries later, the screen art of magic shadow projection came to life in the motion picture. This was quite a different premiere. But Kircher would have recognized the device as an improvement on and development of his magic lantern. He, and hundreds who came after him, had tried to capture the animation of life in light and shadow pictures. Full success was not possible until a later date because the necessary materials were not available until near the end of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The effects of motion produced on the screen through the system developed by Musschenbroek were crude but progress was made. There was also further concrete evidence that the primitive urge of the first painter to re-create nature with all its life and movement was still powerful and had not been forgotten.
Previously Zahn, as we have seen, mounted a series of glass slides on a circular disk which could be revolved before the lens of the projector. But there the method really only assured quick changes from one still picture to another. ”